Data privacy and IT security

The Global Risk Report 2016 of the World Economic Forum includes (a) breakdown of critical information infrastructure and networks and (b) massive incidents of data fraud/theft among the top risks faced by the world.

With cloud services such as SaaS, PaaS and IaaS becoming increasingly important to the way businesses operate, the resilience of critical information infrastructure becomes critical. It is crucial to ensure access to systems and data at all times. Any service disruptions or suboptimal system performance can lead to businesses incurring higher costs and suffering reputational damage. It can even become business continuity issue, especially for organizations whose business models are technology centric. Such systemic failures can negatively impact industrial production, public services and communications.

The breakdown of IT infrastructure could be triggered by technical failures, weather events, natural disasters or terrorist attacks. The Risk report identifies large scale state-sponsored, state-affiliated, criminal or terrorist cyberattacks as a significant risk which can cause an infrastructure breakdown and/or loss of trust in the Internet.

The magnitude of data to be handled by today’s organization is gigantic. This abundance of data opens the door to many opportunities in all spheres of life- economic, social, and political. But with ‘big data’ which can create ‘big impacts’ comes big responsibilities. The globalized nature of the internet as well as the intensive virtual interactions and extensive data storage makes this a significant risk to corporate organizations. Any leakage or misuse or unauthorized access of information could expose companies to legal and reputational risks. Insufficient protection of database and network, unclear management of personal information and vague database access rules are the main reasons behind any data breach.

The nature of the IT services industry does not require Wipro to store any customer proprietary data in its systems and networks. In rare circumstances where, as part of project requirement, it is needed to view Customer data, it is accessed remotely - with the data being stored and hosted in customer’s systems. This avoids the risk of customer information vulnerability in Wipro's systems.